


You Have My Heartfelt Sympathy

by Melodycard



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 21:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10648353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melodycard/pseuds/Melodycard
Summary: When Furihata’s roommate, Takao Kazunari, invites his partner over to their dorm (yet again), he is left with no other choice but to find someplace else to spend a good portion of his night.Or: The one where Furihata repeatedly finds himself sexiled from his dorm room, and is just about to reach his breaking point when he stumbles across somebody who might be able to understand a bit of his pain.





	You Have My Heartfelt Sympathy

Today was one of _those_ days.

It was one of those days where Furihata wondered if having Takao Kazunari as his roommate was a form of cruel and unusual punishment for some wrongdoing.  

…All right. He'll admit, that line of thought just now may have been a bit unfair. Takao was by no means a _terrible_ roommate. He was a far cry from those nightmares of roommates that every incoming freshman prays furiously not to get during the dorm lotteries. He wasn’t a bad guy—even if he _did_ have some eccentric qualities and habits that weren’t exactly Furihata’s favorite cup of tea. And there might have been more than a few Takao-related dorm incidents that hurt Furihata’s head to even attempt to recall. But as an entire package, Takao was actually a wonderful roommate, and Furihata was entirely grateful that they’d been assigned together.

…Except for some select days.

Of which today was one.

After pulling an all-nighter, plowing through three exams back-to-back-to-back, working a double shift at his part-time job, and having gone through the past 24 hours without food (it’d been so hectic that he hadn’t even had time to _eat_ ), Furihata was more or less reduced to an animated corpse. As of the current moment, his body requested of him to do three things if he so wished to live through to the next morning:

  * Return to his dorm
  * Get something into his empty stomach
  * Retire to bed



Surely, that couldn’t be too much to ask for. 

Well, to Takao, it very well could be. If the green sticky note taped to the door of their shared room had anything to say about it.  

Green sticky notes taped to doors, were quickly becoming one of the ultimate despairs of Furihata’s university life experience. They could only mean one thing. Takao had even drawn a smiley face with rectangular glasses on it this time—an expression which was directly opposite to the one currently occupying Furihata’s face.

Furihata stood there, frowning at the note in morbid shock while the note smiled cheerfully back. This smile-frown contest between paper and man came to an unfortunate halt when a series of loud, obscene moans came from the opposite side of the door. 

There were certain things that your eardrums should never have to be subjected to.

With his complexion immediately resembling a lit-up lantern’s, Furihata made a mad dash for the stairs.

***

“Y-you have to be _kidding_ me!”

Chased away from his own room. By a roommate who’s decided that he needs it more to copulate than Furihata needs it to sleep.

“But it hasn’t even been five days since the last time!”

Exiled.

 _Sex_ iled, actually—as according to what he’d heard was the popular term used on campuses by students who’d been in his current position.

“T…this can’t be okay, right? This _shouldn’t_ be okay, right?!”

Furihata had gotten wind of the horror stories floating around on university grounds, but he didn’t think that he would eventually become one of the unfortunate victims.

And a constant victim at that.

“I mean…!”

He was pacing around frantically in the empty hallways of a random floor in his dormitory building. He wasn’t exactly sure which floor he was on—hadn’t even thought to check when he burst in here, really. All he’d been focused on was getting as far away from that hazardous room as possible. With his mind reeling so severely over the incredulity of his situation, it hadn’t even occurred to Furihata how odd he must look at the moment—speed-walking in circles muttering hysterically to himself on a dorm floor he didn’t even live on.

He slowed his steps slightly when he suddenly saw a door at the end of the corridor open a tiny crack.

It might have just been his imagination, but he thought he heard a mumbled, “I’m sorry” come from beyond the crack, before the door gently slid closed. Furihata frowned at that, but figured it was most likely nothing. He resumed his earlier momentum, continuing to voice to himself his dismay at being stranded.

It wasn’t as though Furihata _wanted_ to be one of those stingy, inflexible roommates who went around driving wedges into blooming relationships. He could see the logic behind why Takao would invite Midorima over at the first available opportunity. Those two had vastly different schedules and it was difficult for them to find time to meet. From Takao’s standpoint, it made perfect sense. But therein lies the problem. It always seemed that the best of times for Takao (and by extension, Midorima) tend to also be the worst of times for Furihata. Call it a case of hilariously bad coincidence, but the instances where Takao needed Furihata _out_ of their room, Furihata needed to be _in_ the room most.     

Right now would be a perfect example of such.

While Takao may be able to afford to sleep in like a log tomorrow after his…strenuous nightly exploit with Midorima (Furihata assumed that must be why Takao had invited the man over), Furihata didn’t have quite the same luxury. Classes were cancelled the next day, but he still had work first thing in the morning. There was a triple shift waiting for him, and his body was crying for sleep. Preferably in a bed.

A frustrated sigh fell from Furihata’s mouth.

At the exact time the sigh fell out, that door at the end of the corridor—the same one from before—opened a slight crack again. It still might just be his imagination, but Furihata could have sworn he heard a whispered, “I’m sorry” come from behind the door, after which said door promptly slipped shut.

Furihata furrowed his brow, but quickly brushed the sound off as probably an auditory hallucination. He continued to pace.

What he was dealing with here was a reoccurring issue, and Furihata dared say, it was getting worst.

Though, the brunet would consider, that maybe he was the one who’d dug his own grave. Admittedly, he’d never really raised any _complaints_ to Takao about his tendencies to leave Furihata stranded from their room at the most inopportune moments. Furihata had simply buckled up and made the necessary adjustments each time—unconditionally—because he felt guilty doing otherwise. When he said earlier that he didn’t want to be an inflexible roommate, he’d meant it. Wholeheartedly.

Hence, he kept quiet that time he had a Bio exam in the morning and was barred from returning to his room until 2:00 AM. He lied about it not being inconvenient, when he had to work on that huge problem set due in two days in the noisy café across the street rather than his quiet dorm. He shrugged and told Takao it was fine all those instances he had to take his naps in a lounge chair instead of the comfort of his bed.           

If Fukuda were attending the same university as him, he’d probably be calling Furihata out for being an over-accommodating doormat right now.   

Well, for what it was worth, the sexiling at least hadn’t affected his grades— _yet_. Although, it was quickly pulverizing his mental state of health.  

Furihata stopped walking. He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. He rubbed his face furiously while sighing repeatedly at his palms, only peeking out from behind splayed fingers when he heard a soft ‘creak.’  

That suspicious door at the very end of the corridor had slithered opened yet again. And Furihata would like to say that it was still just a figment of his imagination, but this time, his ears picked it up loud and clear. The “I’m sorry” coming from the ajar door was unmistakable. Somebody really was opening their door, apologizing, and then closing it just as fast.

Furihata blinked, his gaze aimed straight ahead in puzzlement. He reluctantly allowed his hands to fall from his face. Now that his view was completely unobstructed, he could see the gap of the door widening bit by bit. The gap increased until finally, a worried-looking face poked out. The face belonged to a man with hair and eyes that were similar in color to Furihata’s. He stared at Furihata warily and Furihata returned the look with a confused one.    

“Um,” Furihata started, just as the man mumbled another, “I’m sorry.”

Before Furihata could decide how to next respond, a loud bellow suddenly erupted from somewhere inside the mysterious boy’s dorm room, _“What could you possibly be apologizing for_ this _time, Sakurai?!”_

“I’m sorry!” the man instantly cried, and then quickly slammed the door shut without sparing Furihata another glance.

Furihata could make out further apologies _[I’m sorry, Wakamatsu-san!]_ from behind the closed door followed by further yelling _[I get it, I get it! Just stop. Stop. STOP APOLOGIZING, I SAID!]._ Furihata listened in a stupefied trance until the voices gradually faded away. For a moment, he almost forgot why he was even here, but he quickly shook his head to regain concentration.

Oh.

He was exhausted, sleep-deprived, starving, had a long day at work tomorrow, and was currently… sexiled.

The university library was going to be his savior tonight, as always. Before heading over there, Furihata supposed he ought to purchase something to eat. If he didn’t get some food into his stomach soon, he was going to collapse and go from animated corpse to unanimated corpse to…actual corpse.

His life may not be a very exciting or glamorous one, but he would still like to continue living a bit longer.

***

There was a local supermarket a couple of blocks away from campus that was very popular amongst the students due to its highly attractive pricing.

Furihata trudged down the dimly-lit streets, forcing his legs onward despite their protests. They felt like lead. His entire body felt like lead. Frankly, he really wasn’t in any condition for travel at all.  

As he was approaching an intersection, the urge to yawn consumed him and his hand automatically flew to his mouth. Just as his eyelids slid shut mid-yawn, he suddenly found himself impacting with a forward-approaching force. Within seconds, he was backtracking three steps involuntarily, palm pressed to his throbbing head.

“A-ah! I’m really sorry!” he said, once he’d recovered enough for the stars to disappear from his optics. “I—” Furihata stopped when he focused in on the person he had just crashed into.

The man’s hair had the most radiant shade of red that Furihata had ever seen. Like Furihata, he currently had a hand pressed against his head. He was looking towards the ground at the moment as he massaged his presumably sore spot. Furihata noted that the man’s hair also seemed somewhat tousled, like he’d been raking through it one too many times throughout the day. However, the striking hair color wasn’t what really captured Furihata’s attention—it was his eyes. They were red and gold. Furihata had never encountered someone with two different eye colors before. He found himself strangely mesmerized by the sight. Those irises were fascinating, and—although it made the brunet’s cheeks flush slightly to admit—beautiful. However, all admiration towards them evaporated when those very eyes suddenly turned towards him and glared.

“I don’t suppose you could have watched where you were heading?” There was an obvious tinge of irritation to the man’s tone. “Keep your sights focused on your path. It isn’t so difficult.”

The blatantly antagonistic response made Furihata’s mouth turn downwards into a frown. He knew that he’d played an active role in the ill-fated collision. But he couldn’t help it if he’d had to yawn and that his eyelids had contracted right at that critical moment where he was making that turn on the streets. It hadn’t been intentional. However, this person was talking as if Furihata had made a conscious decision to knock heads with him. Additionally, Furihata wasn’t entirely sure if the other man had been giving his undivided attention to his surroundings either, what with how quickly he seemed to have been walking. Not to mention, the intersection wasn’t that narrow. If Furihata had to hedge a guess, he’d say that the crash could probably have been avoided if even one of them were paying some degree of attention.   

“I’m sorry,” Furihata repeated. “It wasn’t on purpose; I was yawning and couldn’t see you.” 

The redhead simply tilted his neck in disapproval. “Well, then perhaps you should learn to stop doing such while walking.”

Furihata couldn’t help but thin his lips in disbelief. There was a counterargument at the tip of his tongue about how yawning was considered a mostly _involuntary_ biological reflex, and that it wasn’t something one could really control and suppress at will. But he held the comment back to not further intensify the exchange. He didn’t hold back a private comment to himself about how unpleasant he found this guy’s character to be, though.

The stranger drove a hand through his crimson hair, further disorienting the already mussed-up locks. He then walked off with a twist of his heel, heading towards what Furihata presumed was the direction of the nearby coffee shop. Furihata’s frown deepened as he watched him go. The brunet’s spirits had already been pretty low on the scale to begin with, but after this sudden verbal scuffle, they were now plunging even further into the abyss.  

***

The supermarket was buzzing with university students when Furihata walked in.

Though, on second thought, perhaps ‘buzzing’ wasn’t exactly that accurate of an adjective.

While the place was indeed fairly populated, the occupants in question were less than energetic. Many seemed to be on the verge of collapse, much like Furihata himself. Some were wobbling dangerously on shaky legs, barely keeping themselves afloat. Others continuously walked and bumped into things—too zoned out to even register the ensuing pain afterwards. While dragging himself across the produce aisle, Furihata even saw one student with his head literally buried in the cabbage section, moaning, “I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail” into the pile of vegetables. Two grocery clerks had to come pry him off the merchandise. However, since those clerks were also university students by day and thus were just as physically drained and devoid of life, their attempts to remove him from the cabbage were unsuccessful. 

The store was always like this during exams season. It was the night of the living dead, and Furihata couldn’t have felt more at home. He was glad that he’d gotten the last of his tests over with today, though he knew that many students still had not.

He made it over to the bento boxes section and scanned the selections on display. The shelves were nearly vacant—hardly a surprise considering this time of the semester. If you had time to cook, you’d better trade in that time to cram in more studying.  

Furihata took two of the largest lunch boxes available, and decided that they would have to do. He knew far too well the unhealthy effects on his digestive system to consume so much in one sitting. However, since he was famished to the bone, that was the least of his concerns right now. As an afterthought, he also grabbed with him a box of juice. His throat was pretty parched and could use some fluid as well.

While he was heading towards the direction of the checkout registers, he stumbled across two students from one of his classes by the snacks aisle. He couldn’t recall having interacted with either of them before, but he knew that they sat two rows in front of him in the lecture hall. The pair was always together, as if permanently glued at the hip. Furihata could not remember an instance where he’d seen one without the other. According to the girl who sat next to him in class, those two were roommates who also happened to be dating.

Now what an ideal dorm arrangement _that_ was. You’d never have to worry about interrupting your roommate while they’re having a romp with their partner if you happened to _be_ that partner.

Furihata eyed them curiously as he stalked passed. They were leaning against one another for support, their bodies in jellified states. Both boys’ cheeks were sunk in and their complexions were ghoulishly blue—classic signs of the university student warrior who has battled through successive all-nighters. They were speaking to each other in hoarse, fragile voices:

“So uhhh, you done with Matsuda’s paper yet?”

“Almost? I just need the closing.”

“Oh man, I still have three more pages to go.”

“Better get to it. You know how Matsuda is.”            

“Sucks. Why’d he have to change the due date?”

Furihata stopped in his tracks.

_Paper?_

_Due date?_

His mouth dropped open as recognition struck him like a ton of bricks.

“OH NO! THE RESEARCH PAPER!” he blurted out, startling the two students and causing them to look towards him in alarm. Since the store had been fairly quiet up until now, Furihata’s sudden exclamation came out unbearably amplified. The brunet flushed, quickly clapping a hand over his mouth.   

“Uh. Please excuse me!” he squeaked, scrambling off before his classmates could react properly to his unseemly outburst.

The paper! Furihata had been so preoccupied with prepping for exams that it’d completely flown his mind. He was only halfway done, having set it aside because at the time, he thought there was another week to work on it. But that was before Professor Matsuda unexpectedly moved the due date up. As it currently stood, the new completion date was Monday. He only had three more days to finish it, and with his job taking up all of tomorrow and several other assignments due on Tuesday morning, the outlook of getting everything done had never looked so nauseatingly grim.

“I’m not going to make it…” he mumbled miserably, smacking his forehead repeatedly against his knuckles.

 _Who moves due dates_ up _, anyway?_

Furihata shuffled from foot to foot anxiously as he waited on the cash registers line. He tried to stand on his tiptoes to obtain a better grasp of how many others were still left to be rung up. However, the customer standing right in front of him was effectively blocking his every view. The customer was a giant of a man possessing neck-length purple hair. His arms were loaded with a lifetime’s supply of candy bars, which he kept opening and stuffing into his mouth. As the checkout line gradually shortened, the pile in his arms became further and further reduced to candy wrappers rather than actual candy.

“Atsushi, you shouldn’t eat those before you’ve paid for them,” a voice whispered from somewhere in front of the candy-eating giant.

“Hmn? It’s fine, isn’t it, Muro-chin? As long as I save the wrappers, they can just scan those.”

Furihata couldn’t help but think that there was definitely something not quite right with that line of reasoning.

And apparently, whoever it was in front of the giant agreed, “No, Atsushi. You can’t do that.”

After what felt like forever, the distance between Furihata and the checkout counters finally shrunk. The astonishingly tall man and his chiding companion were called over to the first register while Furihata was called to the second. The cashier at the first register looked absolutely horrified when his customer dumped a pile of empty candy bar wrappers on his counter.

“Oh, I don’t need these. You can just throw them away after you scan them,” the giant with the purple hair said. Beside him, his shorter accomplice with raven hair looked at the clearly disturbed store employee apologetically.  

Although it was difficult not to continue watching what was definitely the strangest customer-cashier exchange Furihata had ever seen, he had to turn away to pay attention to his own purchases being rung up. The tired girl behind Furihata’s counter had on a smile too wide to be real as she went through the motions of checking his items out. Meanwhile, her coworker at the first register started scanning one empty candy wrapper after another, dropping each into an adjacent trash bin as he went. The young male employee’s facial features were contorted in a way which silently screamed, ‘What the heck am I doing? What the hell is going on?!’ It was a rather fitting look, in Furihata’s opinion. Furihata would have had the same exact look if he were to be in a similar position.

“All right, sir. That would be 1855 yen,” the girl chirped robotically, putting the last of his purchases—the boxed juice—into a plastic bag.

Furihata dug into his pocket for the spare change he’d been meaning to use since the beginning of the week. That should be enough for the juice. He deposited the coins on the counter, before reaching towards his bag for where he usually kept his wallet. He blinked in confusion, though, when it didn’t turn up like he expected.

After a few more seconds of fruitless searching, a sudden memory flashed through his mind which prompted him to pause and groan inwards.  

But of course! His wallet was still on his desk! He’d forgotten to put it back into his bag this morning in his rush to get to class.

“Sir?” the girl asked when she saw that Furihata remained frozen.

“Actually…” Furihata coughed. “I changed my mind. Could I just take the juice?”

***

Exhausted, sleep-deprived, starving, a long day at work tomorrow, sexiled from his room, a paper due on Monday, and no cash.

Amazing. Absolutely Amazing.

True, Lady Luck had never really been on his side to begin with. But this was Lady Luck actively throwing rocks—actively throwing _boulders_ into his path. And there were only so many times a person could take the long way around to avoid those boulders before their tolerance dried up and they start to want to just smash right through them instead.

Furihata was not quite at that stage where he would resort to boulder smashing, but he was coming close. Very close.

Because even after all he’d had to endure, there was now yet another problem determined to add further misery to his night. As it turned out, the box of juice he’d bought—the only thing he’d been able to afford after that useless trip to the store—was as defective of a product as any. It was a faulty product, because each time he tried to poke the accompanied straw through the circular aluminum foiled-covered opening at the top, he was met with defiant resistance. Something must have went very wrong in the manufacturing process of this particular box of juice, because the foil was clearly not so much aluminum as it was titanium. It wouldn’t budge. Not even a bit.

His stomach growled angrily at him all while he trekked down the several blocks leading to the campus library, his uncooperative betrayer of a juice box in tow.

Furihata was tempted to call it quits, march back to his dorm room, and charge through whatever horrors awaited his retinas there if only to grab his wallet.

What was he even supposed to _eat_?!  

“Okay. This can’t continue,” he said flatly, the new-found resolution fueled by his overwhelming frustration. “Tomorrow.” He thinned his lips. “Tomorrow, I’m going to tell him he can’t keep doing this.”

Yes. He’ll speak to Takao. He’ll have that conversation with the man, regardless of how awkward it was going to be. In the grand scheme of things, Takao’s libido was going to have to make some sacrifices.

“I’ll…talk to him. This is…the last straw!” He gave the stubborn aluminum a particularly hard jab, but his aim slipped and the plastic straw bounced right off the top of the box. It sprung from his grasp, fell to the ground, and rolled straight into a stormwater drain by the street-side curb.    

That really _was_ the last straw.

And now he was stuck with a box of juice he no longer had any means to drink from.

Furihata gaped in disbelief. In his stupor, he ended up taking a step back on reflex, a motion that would be his second mistake in a row. For as soon as he did, he wound up smacking straight into someone directly behind him. Upon impact, he felt something warm and wet drenching the left sleeve of his jacket. This prompted him to spin around immediately, wondering as to the cause.      

To his surprise, he found himself face to face with the same redhead he had crashed into hello with earlier. At the moment, the frostiness coming from those heterochromatic orbs could probably turn Summer straight into Winter.    

As Furihata looked lower, he realized what exactly had soaked him. There was a cup of coffee secured in the redhead’s grip. And judging from the blossoming stain on his sweater, some of it had spilled on the other man as well.  

The two of them appraised each other like that, each holding their respective drinks. From a distance, it might have looked like a face-off between the defenders of two popular beverages.

Juice against coffee.

Coffee against juice.

When the redhead eventually spoke, his tone was nothing less than acidic. “It would appear,” he said through tight lips, “that you are simply incapable of navigating the streets without stumbling into others.”

Under better, happier circumstances, Furihata would now issue an as sincere apology as he could muster and let that be the end of it. But too much had fallen down the gutter since this morning, and the rest of tonight offered no better prospects. He just wasn’t his most diplomatic self right now. He wasn’t really his diplomatic self at all, actually.  

There was also the fact that Furihata felt hard pressed to believe this second crash was really his to apologize for. The first one? He’ll take the blame for that. But how could he have possibly known that somebody was behind him _this_ time around? He didn’t have eyes in the back of his head. On the other hand, this stranger had eyes on the _front_ of his head. Eyes which he ought to have used to his advantage to avoid running into Furihata, since he had perfect view of the brunet’s back.

“Well,” Furihata quipped. “Maybe if you hadn’t stood so close behind me and paid more attention to what’s ahead of you, this could have been avoided.”

It was subtle—almost unnoticeable, but the heterochromatic-eyed stranger seemed slightly caught off-guard by Furihata’s choice of response.

Then, as though Furihata’s mouth had suddenly gained a mind of its own, he added—parroting the redhead’s earlier advice right back at him— “Keep your sights focused on your path. It isn’t so difficult.”       

For sure. This was definitely Furihata’s hunger and low glucose levels talking. It wouldn’t be unfounded. After all, there _have_ been studies done which suggest a correlation between a decline in blood sugar and increased aggression.

Furihata walked away quickly before the other man could have the opportunity to issue a retort. He also walked quickly away before he could have a chance to wither under how uncharacteristically valiant he’d just acted towards a complete stranger.  

Had this really been a face-off between coffee and juice, perhaps juice may have just eked out a slim victory.

…Maybe.


End file.
